Special Issue - Call for papers: From Road Safety Research to Practice
摘要截稿:
全文截稿: 2019-01-31
影响因子: 3.655
期刊难度:
CCF分类: 无
Overview
This issue seeks to support evidence-based approaches to road safety by illuminating challenges to the use of research results in practice and by proposing solutions to the elimination of these challenges. The concern is that the good research results are at times ignored, that belief is easily substituted for available research findings and that there is no deliberate organizational structure to provide for the efficient cooperation between research and practice.
Some of these issues are tentatively described below and could be the subject of separate papers.
The role of opinion
The lead paper argues that decisions likely to affect road user safety are at times made on the basis of opinion rather than findings of research. Does this habit derive from the culture of engineering and the centrality of ‘engineering judgment’? What are the circumstances that make the reliance on judgment necessary? When is it justified and when not? Can one have good judgment about safety based on experience? What knowledge, education and experience does one have to have before using judgment affecting the safety of road users?
Behavioral adaptation
It is common to single out some causal factor (e.g., absence of edgelines, consumption of marijuana, inadequate sight distance, functional deficit of old age, speeding, etc.) and then take action to remedy the causal factor in the belief that doing so will benefit safety. But this assumption does not always pan out. The spoiler is behavioral adaptation. To put the reliance on opinion (topic 1) in perspective, it is useful to survey cases when unexpected results were obtained. What, by now, do we know about behavioral adaptation? When can we anticipate the safety effect of a treatment and when not?
Policies, Warrants and Standards
The road system is designed and operated in accord with policies, standards and warrants. These documents are generated by committees of experts and interested parties. How do research results influence the committee deliberations? Is an up-to-date summary of findings prepared for the committee? To what extent does the final product reflect the available research findings? How is the interest of the road user represented? Does the final product reflect some kind of socially desirable balance? What is the balance in ‘minimum’ standards?
How to trade safety against cost, time and other MOPs
The lead paper argues that decisions would be better were their safety consequences known. But how is one to use such knowledge? True, roads can be built and operated to be safer or less safe, and that the safer the road the more it tends to cost and operate. How is one to hit the right balance? Even if one had fact-based estimates of the relevant repercussions it is unclear what weight to attach to each. The State is loath to declare how much should be spent to save a life. Econometric estimates, while seemingly objective, are conceptually unsound and all over the place. What to do? What do Vision Zero and the Safe Systems approach have to say?
The transportation professional’s predicament
The first canon of the engineer’s code of ethics is to “hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public”. It is a fact of life that the use of the transportation infrastructure is predictably tied to loss of life and limb. How then can one live up to this canon? One may follow the current policies, warrants and standards. But doing so will violate the canon because the procedures by which policies, standards and warrants are coined (topic 3) do not hold safety paramount. Even if all repercussions of a decision were known and their weights given (topic 4), balancing them would still not be holding safety paramount. The first canon may be workable in much of engineering, in transportation it is not workable.
The genuine component of the predicament arises because the ‘State’ has a monopoly on the creation and operations of the road network and transportation professionals are, directly or indirectly, paid by the ‘State’. As the lead paper shows, the ‘State’ has interests of its own (budget, publicity, politics) and the transportation professional is cognizant of those when making decisions that are known to affect road user safety. How should the transportation professional maneuver between personal ethics, self-interest, and professional ethics?
The two solitudes
The lead paper claims that the institutions that shape practice (e.g., the committees that produce policies, standards and warrants) and those that produce research findings (research institutes, consultants, universities, etc.) evolved over time in an unplanned manner; that the way in which research findings should affect practice is unspecified; and that there is no plan for coordinated, mission oriented, and effective research. What in fact are the current links by which research findings affect practice and what are the current arrangements by which mission oriented research is done?
Torts, Liability and Sovereign immunity
The lead paper argues that decisions likely to affect road user safety are at times made on the basis of opinion rather than findings of research. Unlike roads, the safety of products such as food, drugs, vehicles, appliances, etc. is not usually left to be determined by the opinion-based anticipation of their producers. The legal system provides the means by which producers can be held responsible for the injuries which the use of their product engenders. The road is also a product and its use engenders injuries; only that roads are produced and operated by the ‘State’ rather than by the private sector. Does the extant legal framework that works for the private sector also work for roads? What exactly is the duty of the State vis-à-vis the road user? Is it enough to comply with the current policy, standard, or warrant (even if these are coined without safeguarding the interest of the road user?) Where does sovereign immunity come in.
Road-user rights
Road crashes are a by-product of road mobility. The ‘State’ has a (near) monopoly for producing road mobility. As discussed in item 4, it is not clear how to balance safety and mobility. However, there is consensus nowadays that the estimate safety consequences should be based on research evidence, not on opinion. This is necessary to safeguard the safety interest of the road user. To clarify the duty of the state towards the road user it might be good to declare that:
Road users have a right to expect that State decisions affecting their safety should take into account the fact-based expectation of the safety consequences of such decisions.
Once such a declaration is accepted by the ‘State’ it may affect the legal practice and rectify the shortcomings of the prevailing ‘from-research-to-practice’ arrangements.